


On the Care and Feeding of Sorcerers

by fallintosanity (yopumpkinhead)



Series: Once We Were Young [6]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, Gen, Kid Loki, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 10:04:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yopumpkinhead/pseuds/fallintosanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a lot of things Odin hadn't considered about raising a Jotun runt as his own - such as why Loki was so small in the first place.</p><p>Odin and Loki character study.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Care and Feeding of Sorcerers

**Author's Note:**

> I've been dealing with Major Life Issues for a few months now, and while I expect that everything will turn out happily ever after, in the meantime it's incredibly emotionally taxing. Apparently my brain decided to handle this by producing superfluous Paternal!Odin and Loki fluff. It seemed a shame not to share it, so enjoy!

Years ago, Odin had traded his right eye for the ability to See, in order to protect his people and the whole of the Nine Realms from the Jotnar threat. He hadn’t had time then to reflect on what that ability would mean after the frost giants had been defeated, after the Nine Realms were at peace once more. He certainly hadn’t expected it to warn him that his son was hiding behind a tapestry in a narrow crease in the palace wall.

Odin had been on his way to the gardens to meet Frigga for lunch, but something told him that this wasn’t a typical children’s game of hide-and-seek. He signaled for his guard to continue to the garden, to let Frigga know he would be late; the man nodded and disappeared up the hallway. When he was gone, Odin crouched before the tapestry and twitched it aside.

Little Loki squeaked in fear and tried to burrow further back into the alcove.

“Loki, my boy,” Odin said. “What are you doing?”

“Hiding,” Loki said. He was bunched up in a tiny ball, knees drawn up and arms held tight to his chest, and his green eyes were wide with fear.

“Hiding from whom?” Odin asked.

“Frost giants,” Loki said. “They’re going to eat me.”

Odin winced. After bringing Loki home, he had tried to tamp down on the use of Jotun as boogeymen, but even a king has no say over what mothers or nurses tell their children. “No one’s going to eat you,” he said to Loki. “Not frost giants, nor anyone else.” The boy looked unconvinced, though, and Odin reached into the alcove to scoop his son into his arms. Loki clung to his neck, burying his face in Odin’s beard.

It had been a while since Odin had last held his son, and it surprised him to find that Loki seemed hardly to have grown in the intervening months – seemed hardly to have grown since Odin first held him. Odin had known Loki was tiny for a frost giant – he’d been small even for an Aesir child, once Odin had found a Jotnar prisoner who’d known when Laufey’s son had been born and Odin had realized how old the babe was – but he’d feared that it was only a stage. Some babies were simply born small, and the possibility that Loki would grow into a full-sized Jotun had gnawed at the back of Odin’s mind ever since he’d brought him home. But it appeared those fears would be unfounded. When Thor had been Loki’s age, he’d been a sturdy child whose golden head reached nearly to Odin’s hip, yet Loki was as light and delicate as Huginn or Muninn in Odin’s arms.

He was trembling like a bird, too, and Odin stroked his son’s head until he calmed enough to sit up a little. “Who told you a giant would eat you?” Odin asked gently.

“Thor,” Loki said. “He said a frost giant would eat me ‘cause I ate his bread.”

“Well, that was unkind of him,” Odin said. “But it was also impolite for you to take your brother’s bread.”

“I was hungry!” Loki protested. “He didn’t eat it.”

“Didn’t you have your own food?” Odin asked.

“I ate it all,” Loki said. “Nurse said I have to wait till supper for more.”

Odin blinked in surprise. The cooks had standing orders to prepare full-sized meals for the princes, specifically to make sure they didn’t go hungry as they grew. He knew how much food went to the boys’ nursery, and there were days when Odin himself didn’t think he could eat that much. “You ate it all?” he repeated, just to make sure.

“All mine,” Loki admitted, looking abashed and a little fearful. “And Thor’s soup he didn’t like. And half his apple. And the bread. Then Thor said I was a pig and the giants would eat me.”

Odin frowned, which made Loki duck his head and cling more tightly to Odin’s neck. Absently Odin lifted a hand to rub Loki’s back, and paused when he realized he could feel the boy’s ribs beneath his shirt. He thought again of how light Loki was, how he seemed not to have grown at all even though he was apparently eating everything he could get his hands on, and suddenly something occurred to him.

He shifted Loki to sit in the crook of one arm so that he could hold out his other hand, palm up. “Loki,” Odin said, “I want you to watch closely what I’m about to do. All right? Watch _very_ carefully.”

Loki nodded solemnly, big green eyes fixing on Odin’s hand. With a little effort – it had been a long time since he’d done magic, and he was getting rusty – Odin called a small globe of light to his palm. Golden light played over Loki’s face as his expression lit up with wonder, and Loki reached out a hand toward the ball.

Smiling, Odin pulled his hand back and let the spell fade. “Now, my son,” he said, “Try to make your own. Do you think you can do that?” Loki thought about it for a minute, then nodded once more. He held out his hand as Odin had, his tiny face twisting into an expression of intense concentration.

The witchlight was a simple spell, one of the first Odin had ever learned, but it had still taken him hours of making sparks and uneven flares before he managed to achieve a well-formed and steady sphere. He expected Loki would do the same on his first try – produce a handful of glittering sparks, or a dim flash of light.

Loki conjured a perfectly-formed golden ball that glowed like a star over his palm.

Odin started, his eyebrows jumping to his hairline. Loki looked up at him, his hopeful expression shattering to fear at whatever he saw on Odin’s face, and the witchlight vanished. Odin quickly smoothed his own expression into a smile, and ruffled his son’s hair. “That was very impressive, Loki,” he said. “Well done.”

“Really?” Loki said, hope creeping back into his eyes.

Odin rested his hand on his son’s shoulder and cupped his neck. “Yes,” he said. “Even I did not do so well the first time I tried.”

“It’s easy,” Loki said. He held out his hand and the bright golden ball re-formed over his palm. “See?”

“Yes, I see,” Odin laughed. “You’re _very_ good.” At that, Loki lit up with a smile as bright as his witchlight.

Odin ruffled his hair again and started off down the hall toward the boys’ nursery. He needed to speak to their nurse, to instruct her to give Loki as much food as he asked for, mealtimes be damned. It was no wonder the boy was practically starving despite eating enough food for a grown man. Odin had known Loki had some magical talent, enough to adopt and hold the form of an Aesir instinctively, but this…

True sorcerers were rare in the Nine Realms; there were witches and healers and magicians aplenty, but their talents were small, limited. Even Odin, who was generally considered to be a sorcerer, and a powerful one at that, didn’t need to eat or sleep more than any other warrior, save when he’d just worked a particularly potent spell. But Loki, his little Loki… He would need more food, far more, to fuel the incredible power hidden within that tiny body. And no wonder, too, that he was tiny – starved of nutrition, his magic was turning on his body to sustain itself, drawing on the energy a normal child used for growing big and strong.

Odin had always thought that Laufey had abandoned his son because of his small size – frost giants were a notoriously harsh race, a cruel product of their frozen homeworld. Runts were of little use in a society where strength ruled supreme. But now Odin wondered whether Laufey had ever considered that his son might be so small because of an incredible magic talent, and whether he would have still abandoned the boy if he had known. The frost giants did not look down upon sorcery as the more civilized realms did, and considered it another form of strength. But Laufey _had_ abandoned him, and Loki was Odin’s now, by far the greatest treasure he’d ever brought home.

Bolstered by Odin’s praise, Loki was now making his witchlight dance on his palm, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. Smiling, Odin nudged the globe with a finger and a touch of will, setting it wobbling. Loki yelped, his free hand waving anxiously as he got the light back under control. “Papa-a-a-a!” he protested.

Odin just grinned and prodded the globe again, this time pushing it up and away from Loki’s palm so that it floated over their heads. Loki stared up open-mouthed, then clapped his hands in delight. Odin called a witchlight of his own and set it to floating beside Loki’s. Loki giggled and waved a hand so that his light drifted toward Odin’s, but Odin drew his own light just out of reach. They played chase-the-witchlight all the way through the halls to the nursery, Loki laughing with delight the entire time.


End file.
